House-to-house registration to begin

GECOM Commissioners voted in favour of holding house-to-house registration in preparation for elections. The Commission also by way of vote decided that they are unable to hold elections within 90 days as they do not have the funding necessary.

The vote to hold house to house registration was, tied 3-3 and had to be broken by the GECOM Chair, who voted in favour of the motions. Meanwhile the vote to decide on election readiness was 3-2 with one of the People’s Progressive Party Commissioners abstaining.

This means that GECOM will proceed as planned with regards to having house-to-house registration in 2019, for which budgetary allocations were already made.

With regards to the possibility of using monies allocated for the house-to-house registration for an election instead, the GECOM Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield approached the Ministry of Finance for advice.

The Guyana Chronicle quoted him as saying that;

“Based on the advice that we got from the Ministry of Finance, we do not have the resources, the monies to run an election at this time,” … “They have indicated that we cannot use the money for registration to move it over to elections. What we have to do is go back to the National Assembly for a special appropriation for elections.”

While Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire had upheld the Speaker’s decision to pass the No Confidence Motion, GECOM is still expected to state its readiness for elections, which it has done by way of this meeting and Vote.

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